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POLITICAL SCIENCE

DISCOURSE STRATEGY ON PRESIDENT BUHARI’S ADDRESS ON THE EXTENSION OF COVID’19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN

DISCOURSE STRATEGY ON PRESIDENT BUHARI’S ADDRESS ON THE EXTENSION OF COVID 19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN

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DISCOURSE STRATEGY ON PRESIDENT BUHARI’S ADDRESS ON THE EXTENSION OF COVID 19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN

CHAPITRE ONE

INTRODUCTION

The background of the Study

Language is essential in human communication. It is a potent instrument utilised by political leaders to carry out their responsibilities. The importance of language in communicating cannot be overstated. English is a necessary instrument for national unity, integration, and global communication.

Political discourse investigations have focused on how political actors develop statements to announce their interests or legitimise their stance. Analysts, particularly those oriented to CDA approaches,

investigate how political messages can be encoded using linguistic strategies such as nomination, predication, and nominalizations, in some cases to delete or deflect agency, and to establish discrete, concrete goals relating to specific social events and practises. Mayr and Machin (2012).

When actors build communications in this manner, they strive to orient an audience to their viewpoints see to embrace the speaker’s position.” As a result, language continues to be a valuable tool in the hands of individuals seeking to persuade an audience to embrace their point of view or achieve political power, whereas critical discourse analysis is particularly motivated by how language use serves ideological purposes. Herrick, C. (2017).

This means that regimes, whether totalitarian or democratic, must communicate in order to inform, persuade, advertise, issue laws and regulations, legislate, and so on. Sharndama (2015) provided insight into political speeches by stating that political speeches are related with either the struggle for power or the maintenance/control of power.

It is diverse because it includes the various types of speeches given by politicians at political forums. According to Chilton (1998), politics is “the art of governance and power,” but language is “the universal capacity of humans in all societies to communicate.” Okoro C. N (2017) shares this viewpoint when she states that politics is concerned with power in order to make decisions,

control resources, control other people’s actions, and, at times, control their values. Language is vital in this process since every political action is planned, accompanied, influenced, and acted by language.

As a result, language is vital in politics since its primary function in various political settings is to enable politicians to build structurally solid social ties.

During the coronavirus pandemic known as covid-19, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari used words to assert his authority.

The term “coronavirus” refers to the crown-like projections on the surfaces of these viruses. In Latin, “corona” denotes “halo” or “crown.” Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ailment caused by a novel coronavirus currently known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2; also known as 2019-nCoV),

which was discovered after an outbreak of respiratory sickness cases in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. It was first reported to WHO on December 31, 2019. The WHO labelled the COVID-19 outbreak a worldwide health emergency on January 30, 2020.

The WHO named COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, the first such classification since declaring H1N1 influenza a pandemic in 2009.

At the time of writing this paper, the Nigerian president has addressed his country twice. Buhari addressed the Nigerian people in March and April 2020, when the globe was dealing with the pandemic. His goal was to inform Nigerians about the virus and the steps the government and the general public can take to stop its spread.

In light of this, the researcher conducted this study to explore the Discourse Strategy on President Buhari’s Address on the Extension of the Covid’19 Pandemic Lockdown.

Statement of the Problem

Countries are increasing their efforts to defeat COVID-19, and leaders are providing daily briefings to their people, but President Buhari has been out of the public eye for about 30 days, causing concern in Nigeria.During the early stages of Covid-19 in Nigeria,

Nigerians eagerly awaited President Buhari’s message to the country on his government’s efforts to combat the disease. Buhari finally broke his silence in March and delivered a historic speech.

A month later, he made another historic national broadcast appearance, this time to address Nigerians in a follow-up speech. The investigation will focus on the second speech discursively.

The Aim of the research

The purpose of this research is to look into the discourse strategy surrounding President Buhari’s address on the extension of the covid’19 pandemic lockdown.

Objectives of research

To outline the format and organisation of President Buhari’s speech on the extension of the covid’19 pandemic lockdown.

To critically assess how President Buhari’s Address depicts Covid-19.

To identify and relate the discursive elements of President Buhari’s Address to the socio-political context of its discourse.

Research Questions

What is the format and organisation of President Buhari’s speech on the extension of the covid’19 pandemic lockdown?

How is the COVID-19 portrayed in President Buhari’s speech?

What are the discursive characteristics of President Buhari’s Address, and how do they relate to the sociopolitical environment of its discourse?

The Significance of the Research

Language use, particularly spoken language, has been researched in a variety of disciplines, including sociolinguistics, anthropology, and text interpretation. The desire to explore the properties and interpretation of discourse texts drove these investigations.

Through linguistic analysis and interpretation, this work provided to a better understanding of Covid-19 discourse techniques and semantics.

According to the available literature, little attention has been devoted to the critical linguistic use of Covid-19, which brought the world economy to a halt.

It is hoped that this study will contribute to and increase understanding of Covid-19 discourse, as well as demonstrate that CDA is an empirical instrument for analysing Covid-19 discourse.

Scope of The Study

The discourse approach used in this study focused on parameters such as linguistic forms appearing as functional entities in President Buhari’s address on the extension of the covid’19 pandemic lockdown, as well as the use of contextual cues and paralinguistic features in meaning analysis and interpretation.

Definition of Terms

Discourse refers to both spoken/sung and written information (Faighclour, 1989).

Discourse Text: ‘Discourse’ is used adjectivally to modify ‘text’ in this sense in order to realise the meaning: the text in the discourse. In this way, the lyrics represents the song’s visual expression.

Discourse Mode: A textual passage featuring observable discourse qualities such as Narrative, Description, and Argumentation.

A modal verb is a sort of verb that indicates the modality of something, such as likelihood, ability, permission, request, capacity, suggestions, order, obligation, or counsel.

Modality is a component of interpersonal meaning. It is “the zone of meaning between yes and no—the middle ground between positive and negative polarity.”

The realisation of the experiential component is transitivity. It refers to how meanings are encoded in clauses and how various types of processes are represented in language.

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